Boxing daze – using state-and-transition models to explore the evolution of socio-biophysical landscapes

Abstract

Critical physical geography (CPG) proposes to bridge the lingering gap between human and physical geographers. To rejuvenate conversations among different corners of the discipline about the possibility of trans-disciplinary collaboration, CPG must provide unique epistemological, methodological, and conceptual frameworks that human and physical geographers alike will find appealing, relevant, and timely. These should help them perceptively characterize, narrate, and anticipate changes in socio-biophysical landscapes. This paper outlines a conceptual framework that can be harnessed in future CPG studies and reflects on what it means to be a critical geographer. To solve the epistemological dilemmas confronting CPG, this paper demonstrates that state-and-transition models (STMs) can provide a unifying framework to address questions about socio-biophysical landscape evolution. Originally developed to account for nonlinear dynamics in rangeland ecosystems, STMs have been used to analyze a variety of ecological, geomorphic, and hydrological transitions in complex biophysical landscapes. STMs have epistemological commonalities with explanatory frameworks pioneered by political ecologists, and while thus far they have been used to account for complex biophysical dynamics, they can be expanded to accommodate critical investigations of the social dynamics underpinning landscape change. By foregrounding the transitional dynamics of socio-biophysical landscape – a theme that has interested physical and critical human geographers – STMs establish a conceptual space in which to holistically interpret the interacting drivers that underwrite socio-biophysical landscape change.